


Antithesis

by LadyProto



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Blood, Character Study, Chronic Pain, Chronic Pain but Kickin Ass, Darker than Average, I would slap my mother for a comment, Is this sex?, Light is bad, M/M, Mania, One Shot, Other, Sexual Tension, Stained Glass, Uncomfortable erection, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 23:32:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18020576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyProto/pseuds/LadyProto
Summary: A tale of sulphuric acid and sugar cubes.





	Antithesis

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this theory:  
> https://bit.ly/2H3GVLi

This bitch.

A single impact sends him flying. Sora twists in midair, his long gangly limbs flaring then contracting like a dying star. It’s beautiful, in the same way that a train wreck can be graceful. In a dazzling display of physics, his skinny body sends pearl-like droplets of blood circling him in three fluid arcs. 

Of course, It’s the landing that gets ya.

Slamming against the earth bruises several of his ribs. This is the part that doesn’t make it into the fairy tales - the audible crack of bones shifting, the blooming purple patches on islander skin. Let’s see your cartoon duck use his magic on _that._ Suffer for me, Sora. Learn the taste of blood on your tongue. Learn what it’s like. 

Sora plants his hands in the mud and gravel. He grits his -- our? -- teeth. I can’t tell where he ends and I begin, but I feel part of an incisor missing. A tongue explores the moist opening and soon there’s blood and spit dribbling down his jaw. His spikes have lost their volume, his hair is plastered to his forehead by the sweat. The air kicks the inside of his ribs and I laugh. 

Despite the injuries, Sora forces himself to stand. His legs wobble as he assumes his usual stance, his hips dropped low and feet out-turned like a toddler learning to walk. A flick of the swollen wrist and his weapon is back. The shaft of his giant key still shines like a newly gilded penny despite the mud on his face. 

Good boy, this isn’t Destiny Islands. 

I’ll give a pass for effort but the technique is misery. With his shoulder and head rolled forward he looks more like a puppy than a hero. He’s going to get his ass kicked, and while I’m never one to turn away from a good blood bath, I need to keep him in one piece, for the time being anyways. “Need a hand?” I whisper into his ear. He pretends to ignore me but the shiver down his spine betrays him. His focus breaks, and when his thoughts wonder, they always find _me._

_The shadow he casts._

I’ve incubated in the core of his brain long before his juvenile babbles had a word to explain my presence. Past the dreams of exotic fruits and leisurely blitzball, right underneath the fantasies of distant shores, I am being born anew. His longing turns to sorrow, then sorrow into rage and there I am again, anew, alive. Like the bitter taste of cheap vodka on his insides, I rake my nails on his soft underbelly.

The flesh doesn’t yield. Aw, that’s cute. He’s tried to get cut. These abs — they don’t suit his boyish image. Have I made an impression on him? Or has he finally grown up?

Whatever. I don’t care. Let me out. I need control. 

I’ve existed in this gray cell for far to long. Through this one way mirror, the outside is calling me. I could answer it, but to what avail? I need Sora. I fucking hate to say those words. I need him to find my brother. If Ventus and I are meant to be one, Sora is the underside of the coin. Forget those cartoon characters, we are the true trinity. Light, dark, twilight. Ready, Aim, Fire. 

On your mark, get set.

Go, _bitch_ , go. 

I need something to latch on to before I sink back down into the nothingness again. Sora gives me what I need -- another blow, another shock of pain. I don’t step in to save him. I want to suffer. No. I want _him_ to suffer. I can’t tell the difference anymore. Then like the good boy he is, he takes another hit. The sound is high pitched and harsh like a little girl in a school-yard slap-fight. If it wasn’t for the pain that is transferred to me, I’d say he enjoyed it. Maybe he does, and we aren’t so different after all. My stomach certainly winds tighter. Saliva pools behind fanged teeth. My eyes bleed. There is wetness everywhere as the vibration of his heart lowers. Finally, finally after so long, he is on my level.

He’s inside the cage of his mind. To the outside, he’s barely moving. To the two of us, we’re finally on even playing ground. We meet face to face, matter to antimatter, orbiting around each other in the shapeless cold void, specks of dust lost in the static of a storm cloud. For all reputation Sora has about his heart, it’s vast and lukewarm. Perhaps that’s his true specialty: pliability. A hollow plastic doll that we can paint with any face that we desire. 

“You need my help.” I remind him. I keep my back erect, staring down as he kneels on broken knees before me. The floor below us is the only permanence here. The unchanging stained glass is still in the image of himself from years ago. The bright-eyed boy doesn't match the quivering mess in front of me now. This caricature of myself looks as disgusting as he should. Finally the outside reflects the boy within. The entirely of him is the waxen color of corpses. His heart cast a heavy, hollow whiteness at our feet. “Oh, Sora, you never learn.”

When he speaks, the inside of his mouth is luminescent, his tongue wriggling like a thick pale worm. “....darkness?”

“Oh, you know it.” There’s a smile there, fighting to show itself on my lips. I settle for letting the air push them into a pout instead. As I gaze down at his pitiful form, a gleeful thought sprouts. I don’t know why, but more than anything I want my boots on his face. There’s an arthritic crack in my neck when I throw my head back to laugh. “It’s game over, kid.”

“But…this isn't a video game.” He bares teeth — too much like mine, only whiter, flatter. Less animalistic. He tilts his head upward, meeting my eyes for one tense moment before falling heavily into my lap. 

He burns.

Fuck, he burns. It hurts. White-hot fingers dig into my thighs like maggots into flesh. He’s infecting me. He burrows his heavy head into my thighs and it sends lightning through my every nerve. My muscles contract so violently that I think I’m going to explode. I feel my shin bones start to splinter. I try to pull back, to arch myself away, but his light violates even the darkness of my eyelids. I see fireworks. My skin crawls. I’m going to crumble away into ash. 

“Fuck! Get off me!” My voice cracks. I sound like him -- But I can’t let that happen. I don’t want to sink back under his skin again. I look for something, anything to act on, anything at all to solidify my existence, but all that I have is him. My muscles still tremble from the aftershock of the light, but I manage to grab him by his collar and toss him away. “Get off!”

Again, it’s the landing that gets him. The glass underneath us reverberates as he crumples like a discarded toy. I feel my muscles grow taut. I’m in control. Yes, control. I love the word. I have to shake out the residual tingles in my hands before I can move again but when I move, I keep my back rigid. I am in control. 

Sora rolls over on one cheek just in time to see my feet approach his battered body. I indulge that fantasy from earlier and use the toe of my boot to flip him on to his back. “Now, Sora, what did we learn?” I roll my foot back and forth on his skin, cutting his bare arms with the gravel and muck stuck in my sole. “Don’t _ever._ Fucking. Touch me.” 

He stares up at me from the flat of his back, his eyes the deep blue of limitless oceans I've never seen. In him, I see my brother, my other half, the idiot kid that kept overwatering plants because he didn’t know how to stop giving. We’re a duality, reverse poles in a spiraling magnet of morality. We’re both equally adept at killing, yet only I am cast aside to suffer. How quickly the world forgets that the darkness only exists because there is light to cast a shadow. 

If I’m insane, then it’s his fault. I put a leg on either side of his hips, crouching until I’m almost sitting on his chest. The heady light from his heart washes over me again. I rip at my lip with my teeth until there's a familiar taste of blood in my mouth. There’s always a low level burn of pain through my entire body, but this -- this is different. Sharper. Only diamond is hard enough to cut through diamond, and this contact of my groin against his thigh -- that’s the hardness I need. 

I scream. I laugh. This is so fucking wonderful!

There’s explosions in my brain again. Like little worms wriggling through a thousand tunnels, burrowing their way out of my brainstem, through my skull and out into the ether. There’s expansion of the psyche in this buzz of electricity. My mind is connected to this heart, to this world -- _to Ventus._ I need more. I wipe the blood off my mouth, and hover my fingers above his lips. I’m on top of the world with him underneath me. “Here.” I take my thumb and smear my blood on his lips. “You need this. You’ll look more like me.” I crane my neck back to see my handiwork. Those blank blue eyes — there’s something in the back of my brain that remembers this sight from once before. A wordless gurgle from a bloodied mouth, and I remember another boy who was once too broken to speak. 

My stomach bottoms out. Then frenzy rises again. I think I’ve chewed off my own tongue in excitement. There’s blood everywhere. It’s so hot and delicious on my cold skin. Sure, he doesn’t look like _he’s_ having much fun, but what’s the difference between pleasure and pain anyways? Two extremes on a sliding scale. That’s all my life has ever been. What’s the difference between freedom and instability? Creativity and insanity? Love and hate?

Xehanort once told me that the opposite of love isn’t hatred, but indifference. That hatred of any kind is just a twisted hard form of love. When I trail my hands down his pallid chest, feeling the sparks that eat at my skin, I agree with that statement from the very depths of my heart. The harder I press into him, the clearer I can feel the jagged lines of stress fractures in his legs. This love is a dense and crushing kind of love. “You need _me._ ” I remind myself. “You need me.”

“I’ll never need darkness.” From my place between his knees, I can’t tell if he’s glaring at me or if his eyes are swollen. There’s blood and that god-awful light splattered everywhere, but it’s the acid in his voice that’s the most ghastly. “And I’ll never need _you.”_

“Yes. Yes you do!” I shake him. I scream into the emptiness. “You need me!” He doesn’t flinch, and I’m starting to tire. Are we both fading? Or is this the price I pay to be made from fledgling trauma and stunted emotions? We’ve never had such a long standoff before. I grip his arms, lift him up as far as I’m able, and slam him down with all my might. The decades old glass beneath us reverberates again.

“Light-,“ Sora’s gasping out his words. 

I take a handful of spikey hair and slam his head down until the ground shakes. 

“Can exist—,“ 

The colors of the glass blur from the force of this impact. We’ve compromised the stability of this place. 

“-without-,“

Each pane stutters like a film reel, leaving a ghost of itself imprinted in my vision.

“-Darkness.” Those blue eyes stare passively into my soul. “Darkness only exists because there is light to cast a shadow.” My brother’s mirage delivers the most stinging blow. “You are just the shadow.”

“No!” I scream into the atmosphere, but there’s no one to listen. Under my steady hands, his head hits the glass. Our foundation shatters. Shards of glass rain up from the point of contact, surrounding us in thousands of iridescent fragments. I blink against the incoming glass. My body lurches. My hand is still at his neck as he looks up at me with a bloodied grin. 

Time has stopped. There is silence. 

We fall.

The wind chokes me. Time distorts. With no ground rushing towards us and no sky above, the act of falling loses meaning. There’s no screaming, no fighting, just two bodies tumbling through the vast emptiness. Around us the glass starts to refract with the light from Sora’s heart. We fall into the shadowed nothingness, surrounded by a million broken rainbows. 

I reach for the boy beyond Sora, but my hands only touch the burning light. It’s the power of a thousand suns burning away at my palms. I don’t want to melt away, but I feel it happening, like sea-salt ice cream on a beachy shore. I’ve never seen the beach, and never had ice cream, but those are the words being fed to me. My arms encircle him. I put my hands on his neck, touch him, everywhere until we’re both sticky and red. I’m not sure where he ends and I begin. We are only quantifiable in relation to each other. In the absence of one another, him and I are indefinable. “You need me.” I remind myself. “ _You_ need _me._ ”

We continue our descent, and I hear, very quietly in my head the words I long to hear. Past the constant buzzing of the wind slamming against our broken bodies, the voice of my brother, my other half whispers out to me. “Please, brother, give me strength.” 

Of course, it’s the landing that gets ya.

My feet hit the ground in a bone rattling impact. I’m alive. I’m in control. I’m in the real world. I look at my hands and flex my newly corporeal form. I’m not made of bones and flesh, but some type of dissipating toxic cloud. All the better -- there’s much less pain when I have no bones to break. A quick glance upward and I realize my eyes are illuminated yellow. 

His friends quickly duck behind an outcropping as they realize their hero has changed. Good. I’ve gotten restless in my time asleep, and I’m just itching from some friendly fire. My entire being is engorged, filled with such an intense desire to fight that I’m basically a dog off the leash. I’m so full I want to burst. 

A quick glance up and the reason I was called here becomes clear. All of this trouble for a Dark Thorn and his Shadow Stalkers? “Is that really all you’ve got, kid?” I hum inwardly. I flick my wrist, shaking off some of the disgusting light splotches left behind on my fingertips. I don’t think I want my keyblade for this. My hands are just fine.

I _love_ getting dirty. 

My personality solidifies once more as I begin to remember what I am called. Antithesis. Rage. Transient life, futile pleasure, and certain death.

_**Vanitas.** _

**Author's Note:**

> Please take this poll:  
> http://www.strawpoll.me/17558078
> 
> Any questions or scathing hatred is to be directed to my Tumblr Account: YourScientistFriend
> 
> Line: "No I want him to suffer" from Invisible Diety. Smooch.
> 
> Beta: EpsilonAlpha


End file.
